


I Swear This Time I Mean It

by TooGoodToBeBad



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Garreg Mach Monastery (Fire Emblem), Mentioned Blue Lions Students (Fire Emblem), Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27282646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooGoodToBeBad/pseuds/TooGoodToBeBad
Summary: “How do you do that?” he asked, and his voice was so uncharacteristically vulnerable, stripped of self-assured charm and reckless flattery. In any other circumstances, she would have found it endearing. Right now, she simply found it sobering.“Do what?” she replied with a raised eyebrow and a nagging curiosity to know just what it was that left him like that.“See right through me.”Mercedes finds him hiding in the graveyard, and Sylvain finds her presence comforting.
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Mercedes von Martritz
Comments: 12
Kudos: 35





	I Swear This Time I Mean It

She found him in the graveyard that evening. His bright crimson hair, which shone like fire in the sunlight, still stood out amongst the verdant green grass and the cool brown stones. He may have been seated on the ground with his back to the wall, but his lanky frame still protruded from the greenery like a statue. It wasn’t the first place Mercedes expected to find him, but she had a notion he’d be here, and it seemed she was right.

“Sylvain,” she called out gently, her voice barely above a whisper. The redhead pressed his palms against his eyes before letting out a shaky breath and turning his head towards her. 

“Ahh, Mercedes. Still as lovely as always, I see,” he grinned crookedly at her. “What brings you to the graveyard at this time of night?”

She pursed her lips into a tight line before taking a step towards him. “I had a feeling you’d be here. Felix and Ingrid are looking for you, you know. It’s nearly curfew.”

His shoulders tensed at her words, and she could see his hands trembling as they curled up into fists and he pressed them once again against his eyes. “They are, huh? Tell them I’m hiding from them. Can’t let them see me like this.”

“Like what?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing,” he laughed as he got to his feet. “Yeah, I’ll go look for them. They probably need me,” he said while his fingers danced on the back of his hands with a strange and nervous energy.

“You don’t have to go right this moment, you know. You can take a moment to compose yourself,” she hummed as she idly smoothed loose strands of light blonde hair between her palms.

“Nope, no need for that,” he shot her a bright and dazzling smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m good to go.”

“Sylvain,” she said, a tad more forcefully now. 

His hazel eyes blinked slowly at her before a low chuckle escaped him. “I’m good, Mercedes.”

Her lips straightened out into a tight line and she clicked her tongue at him disapprovingly. “Ingrid and Felix will be fine, but you aren’t. Not right now, at least.”

He let out a long and unsteady sigh as he rubbed his twitching hands down his face. “Mercedes-”

“Please don’t lie to me, Sylvain.”

She watched him fold in on himself and sink back down to the ground dejectedly. Once again he pressed his palms against his eyes and shook his head slowly. His hair rustled with the motion, and the healer in her wanted to run her fingers through it and pull him close to her and heal whatever was eating away at him. With her usual elegance, she gathered her skirt and hesitantly took a seat beside him on the floor.

“How do you do that?” he asked, and his voice was so uncharacteristically vulnerable, stripped of self-assured charm and reckless flattery. In any other circumstances, she would have found it endearing. Right now, she simply found it sobering.

“Do what?” she replied with a raised eyebrow and a nagging curiosity to know just what it was that left him like that.

“See right through me.”

Her jaw dropped in surprise, and the unexpected sincerity in his words cut right through her and curled up against her rapidly beating heart. “Well,” she said after taking a moment to untie her tongue from itself. “I think it’s only because you let me, Sylvain.”

“Maybe you’re right. You usually are, when it comes to me,” he sighed softly. She watched him reach into this jacket pocket and produce a flask. “Do you want some?” he asked simply.

Mercedes scrunched up her nose at the sight of it, and it was enough to elicit a small laugh from him that sounded painfully real. “Relax, Mercedes,” he grinned, and she could almost see him putting his mask back on. “This couldn’t get Ashe drunk.”

“Well, I’ll pass all the same, thank you very much.”

“You do you,” he replied before taking a drink. “I’m plenty crazy, and I’m plenty stupid, but even I’m not foolish enough to walk into battle with a nasty hangover pounding at my skull.”

She pursed her lips and met his gaze, and he shook his head morosely at her. “Don’t look at me like that, Mercedes. I know what I am. You don’t have to lie for my sake.”

An uneasy silence clung to them. They may have been shoulder to shoulder, but the space between them felt unfathomably wide. She wanted nothing more than to reach out to him, but Sylvain was tricky. She’d spent the better part of a year poking and prodding at the walls that kept everyone out, and she occasionally found little chinks and cracks that granted her a peek at the man he was inside. 

Tonight, she found nothing.

But despite the lack of words and the gloomy melancholy that pervaded the moment, it felt right to keep him company. Sooner or later, someone would find the words to say, even if it was just a hushed goodnight and an uncertain “see you tomorrow.”

Sylvain took one last swig from his flask before dumping out the rest of its contents on the ground, and she watched cheap wine flow between stone tiles and grass like a river. 

“Can I be honest right now, Mercedes?” he asked with a tone of voice that she so rarely heard - fearful.

“Of course,” she gave him a serene smile. “You never have to ask if you can be honest. In fact, I’d much prefer if you were honest all the time.”

He shot her a grin, crooked and imperfect. This was not the same smile he showed to everyone else. “I’m scared.”

His broad shoulders seemed to sag under the unbelievably heavy burden pressing down on his soul. He looked away, focusing instead on the night sky. “This whole month has been hard. Dimitri hasn’t been himself since that night in the Holy Tomb. Hell, I don’t think any of us have been. Ingrid and Felix look at me like I’m supposed to have all the answers, but I don’t know what to say to them. The Imperial Army is right at our doorstep, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it,” his voice caught in his throat. “We may very well die tomorrow.”

She wrapped a comforting arm around him, and it was hard to hold still when he rested his head on her shoulder. “There, there, Sylvain. It’s okay to cry if you want,” she cooed softly. His crimson hair was tickling her cheek, but now didn’t feel like the right time to bring it up and distract from the matter at hand. “It’s okay to feel a little afraid of dying. It’s only natural.”

“I’m not going to cry,” he breathed. “And I’m not afraid of dying.”

“So what are you afraid of, then?”

Her words hung in the air, and he paused for a heartbeat and a half to find a way to express the depths of the storm raging inside. “I’m afraid that everyone else will die, and I won’t,” his voice was uncharacteristically grave and serious as he sat up straight again. “That by some cruel twist of fate, I’ll be all that’s left.”

She’d prodded too hard, asked too much. She’d brought a battering ram to the walls that he put up to keep the world away, and now all that was left was vulnerability. Here he was, bones exposed, a sight that hardly anyone ever saw.

She may have even been the first one to see it.

“Sylvain, I know that pretty much everyone else looks up to you like a big brother, but don’t forget to feel sometimes, okay? You shouldn’t have to bottle up your fears and worries. For what it’s worth, I’m glad that you shared this with me, that you’re comfortable enough to be open with me,” she offered him a tender smile and placed a reassuring hand on his thigh, a simple touch to remind him that he was not alone.

The smile he gave her in return was so painfully earnest and real it hurt her heart to see it. “Well, thanks for listening. I guess it’s nice to talk about it. Feels just a little bit lighter now that I have someone to share the burden with.”

He placed a hand on top of hers, and she wondered what it would feel like to have his fingers slotted in between hers.

Another silence, this one more companionable and almost reverent, descended on them, and she felt at peace. Moments with Sylvain were pleasant enough, moments where his guard was down more so. She was never one to be bothered by silence; she was more than content to let the two of them be wrapped in its gentle embrace.

In the moment, thoughts of war, bloodshed, and violence were the furthest thing from her mind. This was simply a moment to be shared between two friends. _Friends_. Somewhere along the way, she and Sylvain had become _friends_. _Friends_ was a safe word, but it almost felt lacking. She didn’t think Sylvain let _friends_ see him fraying at the edges and piecing himself back together. 

“Morning seems so far away,” he mumbled, his voice hazy and far away. 

She looked at him expectantly with royal blue eyes and an inquisitive eyebrow quirked upwards. “It certainly does,” she hummed thoughtfully.

“But I’m glad I get to spend this moment with you,” he looked back to her to meet his gaze with a pleasant sincerity written in his hazel eyes. “If morning never came, and we just stayed in this moment forever, I’d…” he trailed off. “I think I’d be alright with that.”

Her breath caught in her throat when he said that. She waited patiently for that playful laugh, that _gotcha_ , that knowing smirk. But his face did not light up with that mischievous glee she was so used to.

“That would be nice,” she agreed after finding the words to say. “But the world doesn’t work like that.”

“I know. I know,” he let out a resigned sigh and went back to pressing his palms against his eyes. “Nothing wrong with a little wishful thinking.”

Mercedes thought she was immune to Sylvain’s honeyed words, equal parts saccharine and disingenuous. She was, but she was not immune to his honesty, not when his voice was free from that cloying fulsomeness she knew so well. With a contented sigh, she rested her head on his shoulder and tried to smother the pleasing warmth that was uncoiling itself in the confines of her ribcage. The air around him seemed to smell of pines tinged with only the faintest trace of dangerously cheap wine. 

If morning never came, she’d be pretty alright with this.

“Let me fight for you tomorrow,” he said softly and solemnly.

“I beg your pardon?” she blinked and straightened her posture, but the smell of pines still lingered welcomely.

“Please, stay near me tomorrow. Let me keep you safe, Mercedes. I can protect you if you want.”

“That’s very generous of you, Sylvain,” she hid a shy smile behind her hands. “But don’t put yourself out for my sake. We all have a lot at stake tomorrow.”

“I’m not…” he paused and let out a short laugh. His hands were now clasped together in front of him, and his thumbs fidgeted sporadically. “I’m not putting myself out. If I could do anything tomorrow, if I could only do one thing right, it’d be to keep you safe.”

“Why?”

He cleared his throat awkwardly with a brusque cough. “Why? Well, there’s no easy way to say this, so here goes - because I love you, Mercedes.”

The joke tickled something in her chest - leave it to Sylvain to flirt right before a battle. “This must be the fourth or fifth time you’ve told me this, Sylvain,” she giggled at the absurdity of his previous statement.

“I know, I know,” he chuckled before his voice broke into a strained hush. “But I swear this time I mean it.”

It took all of her willpower to keep her mouth shut and her jaw from the floor. Her heart raced at what felt like a million miles an hour, trying to fight the groundswell that threatened to disturb the ocean that was her mind. “Oh,” was all she managed to say.

“I mean, I know I’ve said it a bunch already, but I do; I just don’t know in what way. All I know is I love you enough that I would give the world and more to see you walk away from tomorrow alive and no worse for wear.”

“Is this the wine talking?”

He shook his head and gave her a melancholic smile. “Nope. Everything I’ve said has been nothing less than the pure, unadulterated truth.”

Her chest tightened as her hand found his again, the familiar warmth a guiding light in these uncertain waters. “Do you want me to say that I love you, too?”

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t mean. I’ve done more than enough of that for the both of us.”

She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, and their fingers intertwined. Whether he started it or she did didn’t matter too much, she thought. But his hand felt nice in hers. “I will say this, though: I think the world of you, Sylvain, and I’m beyond thankful that I’ve gotten to know you. Regardless of where our paths take us after this, you’ll always have a place in my heart.”

“That means a lot to me,” his voice was coming out now in shaky, trembling breaths. “Perhaps more than you’ll ever know. You really are a special lady, Mercedes.”

“And you are an extraordinary man, Sylvain.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” he laughed sheepishly as he rose to his feet and helped her up. “Though I think we may have broken curfew. May I walk you to your room? For old times’ sake?”

“You may,” she hummed, cheerfully noting that her hand was still tangled in his. It was a pleasant reprieve from the thoughts and fears pushed to the back of her mind for the night.

Morning never seemed so far away, and for the first time in her life, she almost didn’t want it to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback and comments are appreciated!
> 
> I did actually do a bit of research about flasks before throwing that detail in, and apparently they were invented way past the Medieval times. Back then, people used to smuggle alcohol by cutting out the insides of fruits and pouring the drink in there. I took the easy way out and just gave Sylvain a flask instead of having him lug around a watermelon full of wine.
> 
> These two are soft.
> 
> I hope you guys liked this!


End file.
